Recently in the photographic industry, there have been demands for a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material to be rapidly processed, to have high quality images, and to keep stable and constant characteristics.
To be more precise, silver halide photographic light-sensitive materials have usually been processed continuously with an automatic processor installed at every photofinishing laboratory. On the other hand, there have been requirements for the laboratories, as a part of their customer services, to return finished products to every customer within the every day of the acceptance of their customer's orders and, more recently, there have been the increased requirements of rapid processing to return the finished products within several hours time from the acceptance of orders. In addition, further rapid processing services have been required from the viewpoints that the production efficiency can be improved and the production cost can also be reduced by shortening the processing time. The approaches to achieve a rapid processing have been made from the aspects of both light-sensitive materials and processing solutions. For the color developing treatments, some attempts have been made, such as the treatments at a high temperature, a high pH, and/or a high concentration of a color developing agent and, further, it has been well known to add a development accelerator. Such development accelerators are, for example, 1-phenyl-3-pyrazol-idone disclosed in British Patent No. 811,185, N-methyl-p-aminophenol disclosed in British Patent No. 2,417,514, and N,N,N,,N,,-tetramethyl-p-phenylenediamine disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter referred to as Japanese Patent O.P.I. Publication) No. 50-15554(1975). In the above-mentioned methods, however, a satisfactory rapidness may not be achieved and the characteristic deteriorations such as a fog-increase may be produced in many cases.
On the one hand, it has been known that development speed is greatly influenced by the configurations, sizes, and compositions of the silver halide grains of a silver halide emulsion used in a light-sensitive material. It has been proved that the influence of a silver halide composition is particularly great and, when using a highly chloride-containing silver halide, a remarkably high development-speed may be shown.
On the other hand, for the purpose of absorbing the rays of light having a specific wavelength, coloring of a hydrophilic colloidal layer has been carried out by making use of a dye so as to work as a filter, to prevent halation and/or irradiation, or to control the sensitivity of a photographic emulsion. Further, for the purpose of improving image-sharpness, preventing of halation and/or irradiation has also been carried out.
The dyes used for such a purpose as mentioned above should satisfy the following various requirements; they should have excellent spectral absorption characteristics to meet the purpose of application; they should completely be decolored in a photographic processing solution and should readily flow out of a light-sensitive material so as not to produce any residual color contamination after the completion of treatment; any spectrally sensitized photographic emulsion should be neither sensitized nor desensitized or should not be affected by fog or the like; and they should have an excellent stability on standing and neither discoloration nor color-fading in a solution or a light-sensitive material.
Heretofore, there have been many proposals for a large number of dyes with great efforts for the purpose of discovering the dyes satisfying the above-given requirements. They include, for example, oxonol dyes disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,247,127, and Japanese Patent Examined Publication No. 43-13168(1968); styryl dyes typically disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 1,845,404; melocyanine dyes typically disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,493,747, 3,148,187, and 3,282,699; cyanine dyes typically disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,843,486; and anthraquinone dyes typically disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,865,752.
Among the dyes given above, oxanol dyes having two skeletal pyrazolone have been used as the useful dyes, because they may be decolored in a photographic processing solution and may readily flow out of a light-sensitive material in character and, further, any photographic emulsion may not be so affected by them.
It was found that most of the oxonol dyes may have no problem when the silver halide composition of a spectrally sensitized silver halide emulsion in a light-sensitive material is a highly bromide-containing silver halide. However, it was also found that, when using a highly chloride-containing silver halide, there may be the defects such as a further sensitization of a spectrally sensitized silver halide emulsion to an undesired spectral region, a fog increase, or a serious variation in sensitivity and the like produced by a temperature or humidity change.
Among the above-mentioned defects, in the case of the spectral sensitization to an undesired spectral region, for example, a color balance may not well be obtained in printing operation, so that a desired image quality may not be obtained. In the case of fog increase, it may be presumed that this defect may be caused by making a dye which has flowed out or a decolored dye or the decomposed matter thereof active to a light-sensitive material in a processing solution, so that a white background may be deteriorated. In the case of serious variations of sensitivity or the like cause by a temperature or humidity change, there may be raised a serious problem that a constant quality may not be obtained because of the differences in the temperature and humidity controls and storage conditions followed by various photofinishing laboratories.
The above-mentioned defects are peculiar to the case of using a silver halide emulsion having a high silver chloride content. However, such a silver halide having a high silver chloride content is still essential to perform a rapid-processing. It has therefore difficult to obtain a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material capable of keeping a high image quality stable even in a rapid processing.